Sep 13 Don't Read This Nord Quote If You Don't Want To Be Angry

On your second-to-last possession, you had a fourth-and-1 from your own 25, and eventually decided to punt after a timeout. Take me through that decision.

Gary Nord:

"Well, when the scenario played out, it was third-and-8 and we were running a screen pass. Coach (Danny) Hope asked me, 'What do you want to do if we don't get it?' There was 4:05 left on the clock and I said 'Let's wait and see what we get.' I wish I wouldn't have said that because we got to fourth-and-1 and then we had to make a decision. We were down to 3:55 on the clock. I wish I would have just said 'If we don't make it, we're going to punt it.' If we make it, we don't have to worry about it. But I put ourselves in a position where we had to make a decision. The decision was well deserved that we had to make because it was fourth-and-1 and you've got less than four minutes left. Two first downs (by the opponent) and the game is over. We had to rely on the defense to stop them to one first down, so we had to make a decision. We tried to get them to jump off-sides, then they didn't jump off-sides. There was still 25 seconds left on the play clock, so we called timeout. We could have just gotten the penalty and punted it away. But we thought that 25 seconds was more valuable to us than letting it burn out.”

Boiled Sports:

Wait, what? Who is in charge here? And there was really that much consternation over a call that a pee wee coach could have made?